Review of overall building comfort in a tropical climate

The well-being of building occupants depends primarily on their health, comfort and the safety conditions in which they can carry out their activities. The search for comfort by building occupants means that the building sector remains a major source of energy consumption and pollutant emissions worldwide. Countries in tropical regions, such as Benin, have a relatively warm climate, which requires appropriate technologies and comfort prediction models to provide the desired level of comfort for building users. It is commonly accepted that good comfort conditions require the coexistence of four main components: hygrothermal, acoustic, visual and olfactory. The simultaneous study of these four components proves to be complex due to the poor knowledge of the relationship between measurements and the subjective evaluation of physical and chemical parameters or the lack of consensus on certain indicators. This paper focuses on a literature review on the overall comfort of building occupants in the tropical climate. A synthesis of the different models and characteristics of comfort components was presented as well as approaches to global comfort indicators.